


the law of effect

by pensee



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: A levee breaks somewhere, Awkward Sexual Situations, Canon compliant to S3 until it’s not, Daddy Kink, Dark!Will Graham - Freeform, Established Daddy kink dynamic, Extramarital affairs (Will and Molly), F/M, Happy ending by Hannibal’s standards, Hypnotism, Imaginary Friends, Love is messy, M/M, Magical Realism, Memory Manipulations, Mid-S3 canon divergence, Probably not a Nice story, Protective Hannibal, Scheming Hannibal, Self shaming, Unsafe Sex, Violent Thoughts, We’ll always have a Memory Palace, Will ruminates about his relationship with Hannibal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-14 06:57:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20596610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pensee/pseuds/pensee
Summary: “You understand what the law of effect is. Explain it to me.”“My behavior is likely to actively seek pleasure and avoid pain. I can learn from my mistakes, and use this knowledge to get what I want.”The corners of Hannibal’s eyes smile, though his mouth remains flat.“So, tell me, Will. If the law of effect applies, what reason do you have for returning to me?”It takes quite a long time, but the devil finally frees himself from the pit and reunites with his lamb.When Will visits Hannibal in the BSHCI to consult on the Red Dragon case, things go a very different way.





	the law of effect

**Author's Note:**

> If you’re still here after all those tags, bless.   
For the record, I love Molly as a character and as a mom, and this fic is NOT about minimizing her relationship with Will. It’s just Will slowly letting go of his denial that he really hasn’t been in a relationship with Hannibal all along.

Molly calls him her “sweet man.” 

When they’re talking with friends, she says things like “well, those rotten boards on the porch finally gave out, so my sweet man and Wally fixed most of it up over a weekend.”

He smiles warmly at her and does things like squeeze her hand or arm, every time, but there is a traitorous instinct in him that flinches away from the words.

Over time, he’d become used to being called “sweet”, but Molly’s epithets for him were the polar opposite of what he was really looking for.

Because you are an ungrateful, conniving boy who does not deserve what I could have done for you. The things I have already done for you. 

Sometimes, late at night, the words reverberate through his skull like echoes through a dark theater, and he remembers sitting through opera in tailored suits while actors onstage sang about betrayal and death and lost loves. 

Moreover, he remembers the way Hannibal had knelt in the snow without shame or regret, lack of expression on his face to match Will’s own, though a single crystalline tear had fallen before freezing a small trail onto his cheek.

He had seen Hannibal’s mugshot on the news months later, the defeated, disheveled look about him. The camera flash had surprised him, it seemed, and for this, Will can feel sorry for him.

Small details—the single tear, the flash of a photograph in his memory—are what haunt him the most, though he encourages himself by thinking that the hurt will lessen with the time and distance he puts between himself and the man he thought could be his friend, his anchor, even his lover.

That’ll teach you to put all of your eggs in one basket, Graham. But don’t worry, it’ll get better.

You never loved him, you never wanted what he gave you; you just needed him. 

There’s a difference, he always tells himself, and the more times he does, the less it sounds like a lie. 

The first time Will cheats on his wife, it’s a drunken mistake. The second and subsequent times (seven so far), it’s just him chasing his own tail. The very definition of insanity is repeating the same action over and over while expecting different results, and he realizes that it’s taken a few years longer than planned, but his current behavior must be an indication that Hannibal Lecter has finally driven him crazy.

This realization comes when he’s pinned between a grimy sink and an an equally disgusting paper towel holder at one of the bigger bars in town. He’d been drinking with friends, and a big guy in a leather jacket had raised a toast to him from another booth. 

Will, who had become an expert in both knowing and admitting what he wanted over the past few months, has also become adept at noticing what other men want. Tonight, he feels, is a good night for these two sets of desires to meet in the middle. 

So, he makes a flimsy excuse about stumbling off to pray to the porcelain god for a bit (not that it matters, with how far gone Bud and Traci are), and walks, mostly sober, into the men’s room with his hands shaking and half a tent in his pants. 

“Haven’t seen you around here before,” he greets, when leather jacket comes in, because he needs to control how this goes, even if it’s just the part where they trade niceties before he gets plowed into the wall. Circumstance owes him that fucking much. 

“I’m visiting family,” the other man says, and he’s got a foreign accent that makes goosebumps break out over Will’s skin. Not exactly the same, but close enough. 

“That going to be a problem?” he asks, cocky, as if Will’s going to need to call him up on the regular for whatever’s on offer. 

Will nearly snarls at the presumption, but he’s been itchin’ for it ever since his fuckup with Molly a few days ago—she’d playfully spanked him back while they were getting undressed and onto the bed, and the sensation had the word “please” on the tip of his tongue so fast his breath caught—so it’s not like he was going to say no to a hard, fast fuck that’s nothing like the slow, mutually pleasurable experience he usually has with his wife.

Am I punishing myself? he wonders, biting down on his thick sweater and the flesh of his forearm beneath, leather jacket dripping sweat onto him as he slaps his hips into Will’s, both of them trying and failing to hold their laugher in at the loud pounding on the locked bathroom door. 

The panicked knocking eventually goes away, and Will thinks there’s probably a lot more yellow snow outside for the other bar patrons to contend with, but that’s not his problem right now because the broken condom they’re currently occupied with is more of a concern. 

He was barely on the edge of coming when his partner had started to pull out, his own orgasm already completed, and had exclaimed before he could stop himself at the catch of the latex on Will’s rim as it tore. 

Semen had splattered and pooled a bit at the juncture of Will’s thighs, and Will yanked a paper towel out of the holder and mopped it up before the guy could say anything else. 

“Hey, look, I’m clean—,” the man starts, and he’s got about six inches and forty pounds on Will, but he’s caught off guard and Will’s been angry at a whole lot of things for a long time. He lets out a winded groan as Will shoves him against the wall, shock pinning him there, and Will hates how much he likes the flash of genuine fear in his eyes at the show of strength. 

“Don’t let it happen again,” Will hisses, imagining the weight of a knife in his hands, knuckles stinging at the phantom touch of Randall Tier’s bones breaking beneath his hands. Nothing but a stupid boy. As stupid as he is, he thinks, as the—he would kill you for fucking me, much less coming on me, you’re dead, dead, good as dead—flickers through his mind. 

“Not everyone’s as forgiving as I am.”

The guy spits something about how it was a fucking accident, but Will pulls his pants up and unlocks the door, gesturing for him to leave. 

“Fucking shit,” the other man curses, and does.

Will washes his hands and face at the sink as a few stragglers find their way into the bathroom, apparently not confident enough to whip it out outside or in the ladies’. He gets looks at his wild-eyed appearance and the questionable stains on his clothes, but all he can think of is reaching for a reasonableway to calm Molly’s suspicions if he decides he has to go a clinic to get tested.

“Where the hell have you been?” Bud chortles, when he comes back out. “Thought you could hold your liquor, Graham.”

“Just preparing for a second round,” Will manages, though if anything, he feels more like he’s going to throw up now than before. “It’ll be on me.”

“Oh it was always gonna be on you,” Traci giggles, and the sentence sticks like a fly to a trap in his brain.

Always on me to fuck everything up, he scoffs to himself, and that’s self pity talking, but it sounds truer than a lot of whatever else goes on up there. 

At least I can drink it all away. I’m out here, and he’s in there, and nothing’s gonna change that, not if I can help it. 

Well, if wishes were horses, and all that. 

“Big news today,” Chilton greets him at four am, two hours before role call, and Hannibal could hear the lights flicking on and off throughout the ward, the irritated howls of other rudely awoken patients reaching his cell, even through the thick concrete walls.

Waving a photocopied headline at him like a white flag, Frederick says, “There’s been a murder in Birmingham, and I have a sneaking suspicion you’ll be interested.” 

Though his expression does not outwardly shift from bland civility, inwardly, Hannibal smiles. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk Hannigram with me on Twitter @penseeart and lmk what you think.


End file.
